About the Author Mark Leiren-Young

Getting ready for the Release of Free Magic Secrets

At the Kamloops World Premiere

Mark on the set of The Green Chain Movie

Mark in rehearsal on Granville Island

Mark Leiren-Young is the author of Never Shoot a Stampede Queen, winner of the 2009 Leacock Medal for Humour. Mark Leiren-Young is a well-known screenwriter, playwright, journalist and filmmaker. His successful stage plays have been performed in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia. Nominated for a 2007 Canadian Screenwriting Award for his first feature film, The Green Chain (which he also directed), Leiren-Young has written for virtually every medium, in almost every genre. His TV credits include Blood Ties, The Collector, Psi Factor and the Earthvision Award-winning enviro-comedy Greenpieces. His stage plays include Shylock, Articles of Faith, and Blueprints from Space and have been performed in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia. read full bio

What people say:

“Mark Leiren-Young is the funniest writer you’ve never heard from. Never Shoot A Stampede Queen is a terrific debut; funny, moving and profound. You will laugh out loud.” — Will Ferguson

“Mark Leiren-Young has earned an enviable reputation as a Canadian comic and storyteller, but here he expands his literary horizon. His portrait of small-town BC is a mixture of Leacock (the wry humour and evocative literary style) and Freud (psychoanalyzing the rural psyches of his cast of kooky character). It’s a must-read, and fun too.” — Peter C. Newman, author

“Never Shoot a Stampede Queen… the most fun I’ve had this year… Mark Leiren-Young is a natural storyteller, a peer of writers like Stephen Leacock, W.O. Mitchell, Jack Douglas and W.P. Kinsella: quietly hilarious, effortlessly moving, and always surprising. Like them, he makes it look easy.” — Spider Robinson, author

“If you are a young journalist you should read this book. If you’re an old journalist, you should read it. If you’re a young rodeo queen, or an old rodeo queen or any member of any kind of royalty at all, you should read it. Heck, if you can read and you are mostly alive, you should read this book. We did, and we are better for it.” — Bob Robertson and Linda Cullen, a.k.a. Double Exposure

“Mark Leiren-Young is the funniest guy I know… Watching him perform, I think I’m too old to giggle, but giggle I do… The first sentence of each tale grabs my attention and holds on tight. Ninety or so lines later — three or four pages (I have counted them!) — he leaves me smiling and anxious to begin yet another of his improbable tales about the life of ‘a reporter in the boonies’. The Cariboo has never looked so… dangerous! If Never Shoot a Stampede Queen is not short-listed for the Leacock Medal for Humour, the ashes of old Stephen should turn over in his urn.” — John Robert Colombo, author and anthologist